THE  ART  AND   CRAFT   OF   LETTERS 
CRITICISM    by    p.    p.    HOWE 


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THE   ART  AND   CRAFT  OF  LETTERS 


CRITICISM 


THE   ART  AND    CRAFT    OF   LETTERS 


CRITICISM 


BY 

P.    P.    HOWE 


O  O  NEW   YORK  o  o 

GEORGE  H.  DORAN  COMPANY 


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I 

THE  critic  is  the  middleman  in  the 
industry  of  the  arts,  whose  "pull" 
is  ordinarily  limited,  but  whose  credit 
and  goodwill  are  what  he  can  make 
them.  It  is  easy  to  say  that  the  system  is  com- 
plete without  him,  since  it  has  the  producers 
on  the  one  hand  and  the  consumers  on  the  other  ; 
and  this  is  to  deny  the  critic's  function.  But 
the  critic's  part  is  not  predatory,  as  we  shall  see  ; 
his  function  is  to  move  the  appreciation  of  art 
from  where  it  is  less  capable,  to  where  it  is  more 
capable,  of  satisfying  human  wants  ;  and  he  is 
thus  quite  strictly  and  definitely  a  creator  of 
wealth  in  the  republic. 

And  yet  the  critic  will  do  well  to  forgo  the 
claim  of  the  creative  artist.  The  labour  of 
production,  both  direct  and  indirect,  has  been 
expended  before  he  plays  his  part ;  he  deals  not 
in  the  raw  materials,  as  the  artist  does,  but  in 
the  finished  commodities.  You  may  say,  if 
you  Uke,  that  since  the  processes  are  superficially 
5 


Criticism 

the  same,  the  one  is  equally  an  artist  with  the 
other.  Thus  "  Without  the  critical  faculty," 
said  Oscar  Wilde,  "  there  is  no  artistic  creation 
at  all,  worthy  of  the  name."  It  is  true  that  the 
attitude  of  the  artist  towards  life  is  closely 
paralleled  by  that  of  the  critic  towards  art ;  the 
business  of  both  is  imaginative  reflexion,  the 
passing  of  material  through  the  medium  of 
personaHty.  But  the  difference  of  material  is 
so  radical  that  we  may  well  mark  our  sense  of  it 
by  a  difference  in  the  allocation  of  function,  and 
in  the  use  of  terms.  Let  us  say  at  once  that  the 
activity  of  one  is  primary,  that  of  the  other 
secondary.  To  put  the  thing  quite  simply  and 
finally  :  if  in  the  industry  of  the  arts  all  the 
processes  which  are  extractive  and  manufacturing 
were  to  be  brought  to  a  standstill,  we  should  have 
no  art ;  but  if  the  process  which  is  distributive 
were  to  cease,  there  might  be  a  glut  here  and  a 
famine  there,  but  there  would  be  art  if  we  went 
out  to  find  it.  The  critic  is  the  man  who  goes 
out  to  find  art ;  his  craft  is  distributive  ;  and  we 
may  test  him  strictly  by  his  contribution  to  the 
general  product. 

6 


Criticism 

It  is  possible  to  be  an  artist  within  a  craft. 
We  may  see,  if  we  choose,  the  critic  as  the 
regulator  ;  applying  the  stimulus  of  his  enlight- 
ened enthusiasm  at  such  points  in  the  productive 
organism  as  his  judgment  leads  him  to  beheve 
will  be  profitable  ;  justifying  himself  always  (for 
the  critic  must  live)  by  his  added  share  in  the 
general  produce  of  human  enjoyment.  If  the 
critic  take  without  giving,  then  is  he  predatory. 
If  he  be  merely  a  small  flea  upon  a  larger  flea, 
then  let  us  join  with  those  who  say.  Away  with 
him.  And  since  one  part  of  our  task  is  that  of 
reconciliation  (since  the  critic  has  been  through 
all  history  the  Rogue-critic),  let  us  now  abandon 
the  metaphor  which  has  been  economic  ;  for 
even  if  there  have  not  been  those  who  from  the 
outset  have  been  anxious  to  deny  that  between 
the  industrial  system  and  that  of  the  arts  there 
is  any  likeness,  it  is  a  poor  ground  upon  which 
to  court  sympathy.  It  is  possible  to  be  an  artist 
within  a  craft,  and  the  critic  whom  we  love  has 
ever  been  an  artist.  "  I  would  rather  be  a  man 
of  disinterested  taste  and  liberal  feeHng,"  said 
Hazlitt,  "  to  see  and  acknowledge  truth  and 
7 


Criticism 

beauty  wherever  I  found  it,  than  a  man  of 
greater  and  more  original  genius,  to  hate,  envy, 
and  deny  all  excellence  but  my  own — but  that 
poor  scanty  pittance  of  it  (compared  with  the 
whole)  which  I  had  myself  produced  !  "  There 
we  have  the  critic  :  the  man  whose  genius  is  less, 
while  his  charity  is  more  (for  original  genius  is 
but  rarely  unselfish) ;  the  man,  above  all,  whose 
concern  is  with  the  whole,  as  that  of  the  man  who 
is  himself  doing  a  part  can  hardly  be  ;  the  man 
who,'',by  his  very  independence  of  the  makers  of 
art,  is  all  the  nearer  to  ourselves.  The  critic  is 
the  ideal  spectator  who  has  by  an  accident  be- 
come vocal ;  the  accident  may  be,  as  in  the  case 
of  Hazlitt,  or  Lamb,  the  accident  of  genius,  albeit 
of  a  secondary  kind ;  but  it  is  a  kind  of  genius 
that  to  the  millions  of  his  fellows  in  the  audience 
is  peculiarly  endearing. 

For  while  the  impulses  to  art  are  perhaps  two, 
the  impulse  of  acceptance  and  the  impulse  of 
inquiry — (they  have  been  so  defined  by  Mr. 
Watts-Dunton) — the  impulse  against  art  is  the 
impulse  of  inertia,  or  the  absence  of  impulse. 
Of  this  inertia  the  critic  is  the  enemy.  He  is 
8 


Criticism 

athirst  for  surprise.  He  is  the  specialist  in 
reasoned  admiration.  The  critical  attitude  has 
on  no  occasion  been  better  defined  than  in  these 
unconscious  words  o£  Sir  Thomas  Browne  :  "  The 
wisdom  of  God  receives  small  honour  from  those 
vulgar  heads  that  rudely  stare  about,  and  with  a 
gross  rusticity  admire  His  works ;  those  highly 
magnify  Him,  whose  judicious  inquiry  into  His 
acts,  and  deliberate  research  into  His  creatures, 
return  the  duty  of  a  devout  and  learned  admira- 
tion." There  we  are  presented  vnth  the  anti- 
thesis between  those  capable  of  surprise  and  the 
unsurprisable.  For  the  unsurprisable,  there  is 
no  art ;  "  theirs  is  the  word  of  a  bovine  to-day." 
They  comply  with  Plato's  definition,  in  that  they 
can  neither  see  beauty  in  itself,  nor  follow  those 
who  would  lead  them  to  it. 

Let  us  suppose  that  the  pleasures  of  art  are 
two  ;  the  pleasure  of  surprise,  or  call  it  Wonder 
(with  Mr.  Watts-Dunton)  if  you  like,  and  the 
pleasure  of  recognition.  In  all  art  we  may 
then  find  the  presence  of  one  or  other,  or  of 
both,  of  these  designs  upon  the  citadel  of  our 
imagination.    There  is  a  quiet,  close  approach, 

9 


Criticism 

of  a  nice  encircling  warmness,  the  sign  of  whose 
achieved  conquest  is  that  we  let  down  our  de- 
fences with  a  "  Yes,  that  is  life  as  we  live  it." 
There  is  another,  more  terrible  or  glorious  march, 
with  wonders  at  every  corner  and  the  sudden 
leaping  of  swift  flame.  "  To  think  that  life  can 
hold  all  that ! "  is  the  sign  manual  of  our 
capitulation.  Recognition  is  itself  a  form  of 
surprise,  seen  on  its  homely  side  ;  if  we  make 
the  differentiation,  it  is  for  convenience.  It  is 
a  pleasure  to  man  to  see  himself  ;  it  is  a  pleasure 
to  man  to  see  himself  as  he  has  never  known  that 
he  might  be. 

Now  the  critic  is  the  specialist  in  both  these 
pleasures  ;  the  one  is  not  too  small,  nor  the  other 
too  great,  for  him.  His  business  is  that  of 
judicious  inquiry ;  but  not  of  judicial  inquiry. 
He  sits  in  no  closed  court,  but  walks  on  the 
highway  with  his  face  turned  to  the  wind  which 
bloweth  where  it  listeth.  He  is  as  ready  as 
Don  Quixote  or  Mr.  Adams  for  the  adventure 
which  may  befall  him  in  the  least  new  bend 
of  the  road.  He  is  all  the  better  for  being 
one  of  your  common  men,  who  remembers  kindly 

lO 


Criticism 

his  home  ;  but  he  must  be  one  among  the  num- 
ber who  are  "  not  incurious  in  God's  handi- 
work." He  must  have  purchased  his  experience 
in  no  other  way  than  the  artist,  and  that  is  in 
Moth's  way  in  the  comedy,  by  his  pennyweight 
of  observation.  But  he  is  free  of  the  artist's 
burden,  which  is  the  obligation  to  create.  The 
disability  of  the  creative  artist  is  very  much  like 
a  woman's,  and  it  is  a  wonder  that  someone  has 
not  proposed  he  should  be  disfranchised  for  it. 
The  critic  walks  free  of  the  twenty  volumes  folio 
which  are  upon  the  back  of  the  artist,  and  free 
of  the  burden  of  the  future  with  which  his 
fellow-traveller  is  big.  In  front  of  him  is  the 
open  country  and  a  thousand  roads  ;  by  the  side 
of  him  is  his  fair  cudgel-prop  in  his  strong  right 
hand  ;  and  in  his  pocket  the  sanction  of  custom 
and  authority  that  his  is  an  honourable  calling. 
As  we  think  of  the  critic,  we  recall  the  words  of 
Scripture  :  "  Whom  he  would  he  slew,  and  whom 
he  would  he  kept  alive  ;  whom  he  would  he 
raised  up,  and  whom  he  would  he  put  down." 
His  word  is  the  word  of  Shakespeare's  cheerful 
executioner  :  "  You  must  be  so  good,  sir,  as  to 
II 


Criticism 

rise  and  be  put  to  death."  He  is  the  humble- 
bee,  that  makes  his  little  noise  in  the  world,  and 
owes  nothing  to  any  man.  You  might  call  the 
critic  a  very  lucky  fellow,  if  it  were  not  for  what 
follows  after. 

For  the  critic  has  his  obligation  ;  and  that 
(as  we  have  seen)  is  to  put  as  much  into  the  pot 
as  he  takes  out  of  it.  The  critic  is  called  upon, 
at  each  of  those  turns  in  the  road  that  we  have 
found  so  delightful,  to  perform  a  very  difficult 
and  a  very  delicate  act  of  surrender ;  and  that 
is  the  act  of  self-surrender.  Nor  is  that  state- 
ment quite  the  end  of  the  matter,  for  his  devout 
duty  is  the  rendering  up  of  all  the  sensible  and 
percipient  man  without  the  relaxation  of  his 
identity.  It  is  no  act  of  faith,  this ;  the  business 
is  no  beheving,  confessing,  affirming,  swearing, 
and  maintaining  of  a  Dulcinea  del  Toboso  ;  no 
comfortable  surrender  to  a  Higher  Authority ; 
for  the  highest  authority  is  the  critic's  own  soul. 
The  idea  of  a  soul  surrendered  into  safe  keeping 
carries  with  it  the  idea  of  an  Index  Librorum 
Prohibitorum  ;  and,  for  the  critic,  there  can  be 
no  Index  Librorum  Prohibitorum. 

12 


Criticism 

Without  irreverence  it  may  be  claimed  for  the 
critic  that  it  is  he  who  by  giving  his  own  soul, 
saves  it.  The  Christian  paradox  is  also  the 
paradox  of  good  criticism.  For  the  demand 
made  by  a  work  of  art  upon  the  spectator  is 
always  the  demand  for  self-surrender  :  except 
ye  become  as  one  of  these  ye  cannot  enter  in. 
The  child,  with  his  whole  soul  issuing  from  his 
eyes  to  meet  the  told  story  half-way,  is  the  type 
of  the  audience  art  always  demands.  And  his 
soul,  whether  he  be  looking  at  a  picture  or  read- 
ing a  book,  is  what  the  critic  has  got  to  lend  out 
of  him.  That  is  a  very  exhausting  experience  ! 
But  there  you  are,  art  does  make  its  demands. 
It  is  often  very  tiresome,  but  it  does.  And  right 
in  the  forefront  of  critical  qualifications  one 
would  put  this  faculty  of  self-surrender — of 
abject,  and  yet  of  qualified,  self-surrender.  But 
before  we  amplify  the  qualification,  let  us  give 
definition  to  our  critic  (who  is  at  present  a 
somewhat  speculative  figure,  an  Ariel  still  con- 
fined within  his  oak)  by  pointing  out  how  rare 
is  this  faculty  of  his.  There  is  no  person  more 
infrequently  met  with  than  the  person  who  has 

13 


Criticism 

really  read  a  book.  "  Had  a  go  at  it  ?  "  Yes. 
"  Derived  enjoyment  from  it  ?  "  Oh,  certainly  ! 
But  the  act  of  reading  is  an  act  of  giving  as  well 
as  of  receiving.  There  are  books  of  the  greatest 
beauty  and  of  the  highest  possibility  of  pleasure 
which  are  extremely  hard  to  read.  One  has  to 
give  one's  self  up  to  them,  that  is ;  and  they  go  on 
asking  for  such  a  lot  of  one's  self  !  It  is  not  a 
question,  of  course,  of  the  aloof  or  the  recondite 
(although  even  here  it  is  the  critic's  business, 
if  he  undertake  to  deliver  judgment,  to  make 
the  protracted  plunge).  Where  the  form  of  a 
book  is  incidental  and  repetitive,  as  in  the  old 
romances  of  the  road,  you  may  read  as  you  run 
or  even  run  as  you  read  ;  but  where  the  form  is 
integral  and  organic,  as  in  the  modern  novel,  it 
is  probable — if  the  book  is  The  Brothers  Kara- 
mazov — -that  you  should  take  a  week  off  for  the 
job.  That  is  one  way  of  putting  the  case,  an 
extreme  way.  It  would  be  equally  clear,  and 
perhaps  more  persuasive,  to  remark  how  the 
theatre  can  ob\iously  give  you  nothing  unless 
you  give  three  consecutive  hours  of  your  time 
to  the  theatre.  And  even  then,  you  must  not 
14 


Criticism 

hold  fast  to  your  box  o£  chocolates  or  to  the 
thought  of  your  last  train,  or  the  theatre  can 
give  you  very  little.  The  critic  is  the  person 
who  holds  fast  to  something,  as  we  shall  see  in 
a  moment,  but  who  holds  fast  to  nothing  of  his 
understanding  soul.  He  must  not  "  hang  back," 
nor  find  himself  at  war  'twixt  will  and  will  not. 
It  is  probable  that  Voltaire  was  holding  fast  to 
the  classical  tradition  when  he  found  Shakespeare 
to  be  a  great  fool  with  superb  moments.  It  is 
probable  that  the  Daily  Mail  was  lacking  in  the 
faculty  of  self-surrender  when  it  said  the  other 
day  that  Dostoevsky  was  a  tedious  madman 
whose  admirers  talked  pretentious  nonsense. 

What  is  it  then  to  which  the  critic  holds  even 
while  he  performs  his  appointed  task  of  self- 
abasement  ?  He  holds  fast  to  his  values.  But 
what  are  they,  and  whence  do  they  come  ?  Are 
they  inborn,  or  has  he  learned  them  ;  is  his 
mother's  knee  the  seat  of  them,  or  has  he  found 
them  at  Aristotle's  feet  ?  ^    It  might  be  said,  in 

^  When  we  consider  the  use  that  has  been  made  of  Aristotle, 
it  is  amusing  to  remember  him  on  the  artist's  so-called  "  stan- 
dard of  correctness."  "  If  he  has  represented  a  horse  as  throw- 
ing out  both  his  off  legs  at  once,"  we  read  in  the  Poetics,  "  the 
error  is  not  essential  to  the  poetry." 

IS 


Criticism 

the  manner  of  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw,  that  the  best 
scheme  o£  values  is  that  there  are  no  schemes 
o£  values.  But  we  hesitate  to  say  that  when  we 
remember  the  critic  for  the  halfpenny  papers 
who  walks  daily  in  his  garden,  who  met  Shake- 
speare there  on  Monday,  Homer  on  Tuesday, 
and  who  may  quite  well  meet  God  before  the 
end  of  the  week.  The  critic  must  have  his  sense 
of  values,  even  if  they  be  not  a  scheme.  It  was 
Matthew  Arnold's  opinion  that  the  critic  acquired 
his  values  by  diligent  experience.  "  Knowledge, 
and  ever  fresh  knowledge,  must  be  the  critic's 
great  concern  for  himself."  The  function  of 
criticism  according  to  Arnold — the  disinterested 
endeavour  to  learn  and  propagate  the  best  that 
is  known  and  thought  in  the  world — leaves  surely 
something  out  of  its  account.  It  is  one  thing  to 
tell  a  man  that  a  knowledge  of  his  country's 
literature  assiduously  persevered  in,  together  with 
the  mastery  of  at  least  one  literature  that  is 
foreign,  will  make  him  a  critic  ;  but  it  is  another ' 
to  give  him  our  love  and  belief  when  he  goes  into 
practice.  For  we  know  that  the  critic  who  seals 
us  of  his  company  has  something  more  than 
i6 


Criticism 

accomplishment.  Moliere's  Don  Juan,  a  gentle- 
man who  only  believes  that  two  and  two  make 
four,  and  that  four  and  four  are  eight,  is  not  the 
perfect  critic.  A  critic  is  not  a  merely  learned 
man,  or  there  would  be  as  many  critics  as  there 
have  been  scholars.  The  best  critic  may  even 
be  a  man  who  is  not  learned.  Hazlitt,  as  learning 
goes,  was  not  a  learned  man  ;  his  culture  was 
intensive,  and  it  is  probable  that  its  margins  were 
soon  reached.  It  is  even  likely  that  Gifford  was 
a  more  learned  man  ;  Gifford,  the  summit  of 
whose  attainments  is  to  have  borne  a  hand  in 
killing  Keats.  What  Hazlitt  had  was  an  ex- 
quisite sensibility,  and  unconquerable  sense. 
Where  did  he  get  these  things  ?  Did  he  learn 
them  ?  WeU,  we  know,  on  his  own  word,  that 
for  eight  years  he  could  do  nothing  right,  and 
despaired  of  ever  so  much  as  covering  a  single 
sheet  of  paper  with  the  simple  thing  he  wished 
to  say.  For  eight  years  he  could  do  nothing 
right,  and  for  the  rest  of  his  life  he  could  do 
nothing  (or  nearly  nothing)  wrong.  But  was  the 
critic  made  in  these  eight  years  ? — made  as 
millionaires  are  made,  we  are  told,  out  of  charity 
B  17 


Criticism 

boys  and  presidents  out  of  peasants.  One  does 
not  think  so.  One  fancies  the  critic  has  to  be 
born,  like  his  betters.  What  HazHtt  had  to 
acquire,  if  he  may  be  beHeved,  is  the  means  of 
self-expression  ;  but  he  had  not  to  acquire  his 
self  in  order  to  have  something  to  express. 

We  have  come,  then,  to  the  point  at  which 
we  see  the  critical  paradox  in  terms  of  the  self 
which  is  at  once  surrendered  and  retained.  You 
may  say  that  it  is  nothing  but  the  paradox  of  all 
creation,  by  which  the  artist  gives  himself  to 
life  and  a  woman  to  her  lover.  But  while  it  is 
the  same,  we  may  adhere  to  our  standpoint  from 
which  we  see  it  to  be  different.  If  the  nature  of 
the  artist  and  the  critic  are  one  in  kind,  then 
we  may  expect  the  artists  to  be  the  best  critics. 
But  the  artists  are  not  the  best  critics.  There 
comes  a  point  in  the  career  of  the  creative  artist 
when  he  can  read  with  patience  no  books  but 
his  own  ;  when  to  look  upon  another's  pictures 
is  a  disturbance.  And  this  is  quite  right.  He 
has  performed  his  act  of  surrender  in  regard  to 
life,  and  we  cannot  ask  that  he  should  perform 
it  again  in  regard  to  art — in  regard  to  someone 
i8 


Criticism 

else's  art.  The  artist's  proper  concern  is  with 
his  own.  We  might  almost  say  that  the  subjec- 
tive consideration  of  art  is  the  artist's,  the  ob- 
jective is  the  critic's.  He  who  is  immersed  in 
what  concerns  person  or  place,  says  Emerson 
wisely,  cannot  see  the  problem  of  existence. 
Tolstoy  is  an  admirable  artist ;  but  when  Tol- 
stoy sets  himself  to  tell  us  what  is  art,  he  tells  us 
nothing  but  the  measure  of  his  inability  to  read 
his  contemporaries'  books,  to  look  at  their  pic- 
tures, and  to  listen  to  their  music.  In  other  words, 
Tolstoy  is  a  bad  critic.  Nor  is  Tolstoy  alone  in 
this  respect  among  creative  artists  ;  and  we  shall 
find  ourselves  confronting  later  on  the  artist  as 
critic  as  one  of  our  secular  abuses.  The  critic 
as  artist  may  be  all  very  well ;  but  the  artist  as 
critic  is  frequently  the  devil.  That  was  part  of 
what  Matthew  Arnold  meant  when  he  said  that 
at  all  costs  criticism  must  keep  itself  free  of  the 
practical  spirit. 

We  have  defined  the  critic's  function  ;  by 
marking  some  at  least  of  his  specialised  qualities 
we  have  perhaps  defined  the  man.  We  have 
seen  him  as  the  chartered  libertine  of  letters, 

19 


Criticism 

walking  at  his  will  in  the  ways  of  the  world ;  as 
the  gay  agent  that  carries  the  pollen  from  flower 
to  flower,  lest  any  one  may  fail  to  be  infected. 
For  him  it  may  be  the  unsubdued  forest  on  the 
one  day,  and  the  sweet  enclosed  garden  on  the 
morrow.  But  we  have  seen  also  that  this  is  not 
the  butterfly  existence  that  we  perhaps  thought 
it ;  he  also,  in  this  world  of  ours,  walks  with  a 
pack  upon  his  back.  And  now  we  may  turn  to 
another  aspect  of  the  matter. 


20 


II 

It  was  Fielding  who  remarked  that  a  news- 
paper was  still  a  newspaper,  since  it  consists  of 
just  the  same  number  of  words  whether  there  is 
any  news  in  it  or  not.  It  is  the  same  with  a 
novel,  which  is  still  a  novel  if  it  attain  by  any 
means  to  the  customary  six-shilling  length  and 
if  its  covers  do  but  hold  it  together.  And  it  is 
the  same  with  criticism,  which  consists  of  just 
the  same  number  of  words  whether  there  be 
any  sense  in  them  or  not.  How,  then,  are  we  to 
begin  to  discriminate,  in  this  flood  and  turmoil 
of  printed  matter  which  has  our  generation  up 
to  the  neck,  and  which  has  gone  nigh  to  sub- 
merge it  ?    We  may  sigh,  with  Pope,  for  Horace  : 

Such  once  were  critics ;  such  the  happy  few 
Athens  and  Rome  in  better  ages  knew, 

or  we  may  sit  down  to  settle  our  own  troubles. 

It  cannot  be  too  often  repeated  that  Any- 
body can  say  Something  about  Anything.  Those 
are  words  which,  if  I  had  my  way,  I  would  put 


Criticism 

up  where  Oscar  Wilde  wished  to  put  certain  of 
his,  so  that  the  moon  might  silver  them  by  night 
and  the  sun  gild  them  by  day.  Anybody  can 
say  something  about  anything — and  they  do  it. 
They  have  always  done  it ;  although  not  perhaps 
with  the  same  dreadful  command  of  our  auditory 
nerves  as  they  may  purchase  with  their  penny- 
weight of  observation  in  the  present.  It  is  one 
of  the  most  cherished  of  the  liberties  of  the 
Englishman ;  and,  as  Mr.  Wells  says,  "  This 
here  Progress — it  goes  on."  Anybody  can  say 
something  about  anything  ;  but  what  they  say 
need  not  be  criticism,  it  may  be  comment. 
Ours  is  the  day  in  which  comment  rules,  and 
criticism  is  hard  put  to  it  to  deny  its  name  to 
the  pretender.  It  is  the  apotheosis  of  the 
irrelevant.  The  day  has  come  of  which  Matthew 
Arnold  spoke  when  he  said  that  as  soon  as  we 
got  an  idea  or  half  an  idea,  we  should  be  running 
out  into  the  street  with  it.  Little  boys  run  out 
into  the  street  with  our  halves  of  ideas,  and  they 
sell  them,  with  all  the  world's  news  and  the 
starting  prices,  for  a  halfpenny. 

Wherein     does     criticism     differ    from     the 

22 


Criticism 

usurper  ?  It  differs  from  it  first  of  all  in  its 
independence  of  the  practical  spirit ;  and  this 
is  the  other  part  of  what  Matthew  Arnold  meant. 
The  practical  spirit  may  manifest  itself  in  various 
ways,  and  is  always  irrelevant  to  the  true  spirit 
of  criticism.  The  practical  spirit  manifests 
itself,  on  the  lowest  plane,  in  the  institution 
of  the  Quid  Pro  Quo.  I  wish  to  proceed  here 
with  great  caution.  It  is  probable  that  what  is 
known  as  reviewing  has  at  all  times  had,  in  cer- 
tain places,  a  sinister  unacknowledged  cousinship 
with  the  principle  of  something  for  something. 
It  is  always  possible  for  a  publisher  to  say  (I  do 
not  say  that  there  is  such  a  publisher),  "  I  will 
give  you  free  copies  of  my  books  and  my  adver- 
tisements, and  you  will  give  me  a  good  selling 
notice."  It  is  always  conceivable  that  a  manager 
may  say  (I  am  not  so  much  as  hinting  at  his 
existence),  "  I  will  give  you  free  tickets  for  the 
theatre  and  the  opportunity  of  much  cheap 
matter  for  your  journal,  and  you  will  give  me  a 
good  line  for  my  posters."  It  is  always  credible 
that  one  young  novelist  may  say  to  another 
young    novelist    (credible,    but    no    more),    "  I 

23 


Criticism 

praised  your  last  novel  as  hardly  inferior  to 
Turgeniev,  and  it  would  be  nice  of  you  if  you 
would  praise  my  next  novel  as  better  than 
Balzac."  This,  when  and  if  and  though  it  might 
happen,  would  be  mere  commercial  organisation 
and  universal  providing.  This  would  be  out- 
Harroding  Harrod.  According  to  this  interpre- 
tation, the  critic's  burden  would  be  no  other  in 
kind  than  that  other  burden,  sung  by  the  poet. 

By  open  speech  and  simple, 
An  hundred  times  made  plain, 

To  seek  another's  profit, 
And  work  another's  gain. 

But  irrelevancy  may  go  deeper. 

There  is  the  comment  of  the  coteries.  This 
may  be  as  free  as  is  possible  from  the  commercial 
guile.  This  is  a  form  of  fellow-feeling,  a  kind 
of  instinct  of  gregariousness,  very  difficult  to  be 
angry  with.  At  times  it  is  hardly  separable  from 
the  spirit  which  animates  a  band  of  brothers, 
who  have  grown  up  and  done  their  work  and 
settled  into  security  together.  This  it  is  which 
animates  those  painters'  widows,  who  write  to 
24 


Criticism 

the  newspapers  deprecating  that  the  truth  should 
be  spoken  o£  the  art  of  one  o£  their  number, 
who  has  left  a  wife  and  children  whose  feelings 
may  be  hurt.  It  is  often  beautiful,  but  it  is 
rarely  relevant. 

There  is  the  irrelevance  dictated  by  the 
practical  spirit  in  the  interest  of  social  morality, 
according  to  one  private  opinion  or  another. 
This  is  as  old  as  Stephen  Gosson's  School  o  Abuse^ 
or  Jeremy  Collier's  Short  View  oj  the  Immorality 
of  the  English  Stage.  No  one  would  call  Collier  a 
good  critic  ;  he  is  not  so  good  a  critic  of  the 
Comedy  of  Manners  as  Macaulay,  and  that  is 
not  saying  much,  for  Macaulay  too  was  confined 
within  the  limits  of  his  case.  Collier  confuses 
Congreve  with  Otway,  because  they  are  "  im- 
moral," in  the  worst  manner  of  Mr.  Bernard 
Shaw  preferring  Mr.  Henry  Arthur  Jones  before 
Wilde,  because  Mr.  Jones  is  "  serious."  Collier 
was  a  good  man,  oh  yes ;  and  we  have  a  number 
of  his  kind  to-day. 

The  irrelevance  which  was  dictated  by  the 
practical  spirit  in  the  interest  of  politics  has  all 
but  died  in  England.  The  Tory  papers  would 
25 


Criticism 

not  now  kill  Keats  because  he  was  a  Cockney, 
and  the  protege  of  Radicals ;  they  would  con- 
sider his  circumstances  an  additional  interest  in 
his  discovery,  and  would  overlook  his  politics. 
The  poems  by  a  "  chemist's  assistant  "  would 
go  into  fifteen  large  editions,  particularly  if  it 
could  be  hinted  that  he  wrote  them  at  the 
counter.  The  furnaces  of  the  Hell-fire  critics 
are  dead  and  cold.  Our  comment  may  not 
always  be  criticism,  but  it  is  almost  invariably 
kind. 

Meredith  in  Rhoda  Fleming  took  a  gloomy  view 
of  all  this,  "  The  ofiice  of  critic,  is  now,  in 
fact,"  he  said,  "  virtually  extinct ;  the  taste  for 
tickling  and  slapping  is  universal  and  imperative, 
.  .  .  There  are  captains  of  the  legions,  but  no 
critics."  Comment,  then,  is  the  business  of 
saying  something,  a  business  highly  and  com- 
pletely organised,  and  therefore,  it  is  to  be  sup- 
posed, lucrative  to  someone.  It  is  the  great 
obscurer  of  values  in  our  day.  They  order 
this  matter  better  in  France. 


26 


Ill 

"  A  GENUINE  criticism  should,  as  I  take  it," 
said  Hazlitt,  "  reflect  the  colours,  the  light  and 
shade,  the  soul  and  body  of  a  work."  I  turn  to 
my  Dictionary,  and  I  find  that  it  does  not  agree 
with  Hazlitt.  I  find  that  while  the  word  critic 
need,  according  to  its  origin,  bear  no  meaning 
but  that  of  a  pronouncer  of  judgments,  it  does 
actually  bear  the  primary  meaning  (in  the 
opinion  of  my  Dictionary)  of  a  pronouncer  of 
adverse  judgments,  a  censorious  person.  Now  this 
is  extraordinary !  I  take  up  the  most  influential 
of  the  weekly  critical  journals  (which  surely  will 
know),  and  I  read  :  "  This  is  not  a  work  to 
criticise,  but  to  enjoy  hght-heartedly."  And 
why  is  this  "  not  a  work  to  criticise  "  ? — is  there 
something  in  the  act  of  criticism  which  is 
inimical,  nay,  which  is  antithetical,  to  the  act  of 
light-hearted  enjoyment  ?  Are  all  our  critics, 
then,  to  be  men  of  heavy  heart,  and  heavier 
pens  ?  Are  they  to  be  weighed  down  with  the 
professional  pack  of    their  learning,  and  bent 

27 


Criticism 

with  the  burden  of  delivering  judgment  ?  Are 
they  to  be  tired  persons,  worn  with  the  daily 
task  of  speaking  ill,  or  of  speaking  well  (their 
more  likely  task,  despite  my  Dictionary),  or  of 
speaking  in  propria  persona  at  all,  who  slip  out 
of  their  critical  garments  with  the  delight  we 
may  imagine  the  sewerman  to  experience  in 
doffing  his  overalls,  or  the  exhausted  grocer  in 
putting  off  his  apron  and  leaving  his  scales  and 
the  thousand  tedious  commodities  of  the 
counter  ?  I  think  not ;  I  think  not  with  all 
my  heart.  This  popular  misconception  of  the 
critic  as  a  censorious  person  will  have  to  be  got 
rid  of  altogether.  No  longer  must  it  be  with  a 
connotation  of  reproach  that  one  hears  (in  the 
columns  of  the  weekly  critical  journals  at  least), 
"  Oh,  but  you're  so  critical.''^  The  only  possible 
answer,  for  the  critic,  is,  "  Yes,  madam,  that  is 
what  I  conceive  myself  to  be  paid  to  be." 

Nevertheless  the  idea  that  the  critic  is  a 
censorious  person  dies  hard  in  England.  Not 
all  the  kindness  of  our  comment  has  sufficed  to 
kill  it.  Partly,  I  think,  the  reason  is  that  in  our 
literary  history  precept  has  not,  on  any  notable 
28 


Criticism 

occasion,  preceded  practice ;  as  Lessing  in 
Germany  came  before  Goethe  and  Schiller. 
It  really  seems  that,  in  other  spheres  as  well  as 
the  political,  our  national  genius  is  for  doing 
things  and  for  discovering  afterwards  what  we 
have  done.  It  is  an  admirable  method  ;  but  it 
has  this  minor  and  incidental  hardship,  that 
criticism  in  England  does  not  easily  get  recog- 
nised as  a  constructive  force.  Certainly  the 
criticism  of  the  arts  in  England  was  a  long  time 
in  earning  the  title.  It  was  incidental.  One  may 
have  found  delightful  remarks  in  More  or 
Ascham,  but  they  were  not  what  the  books  were 
written  for.  As  for  the  formal  criticism  of  the 
period,  I  do  not  imagine  that  any  thirsty  reader 
ever  got  much  refreshment  from  George  Putten- 
ham  (if  it  was  George,  and  not  his  brother 
Richard).  And  as  for  Sidney's  Defence  oj  Poesie^ 
it  is  mostly  taken  up  with  answering  back  at 
Gosson — a  profitless  business ;  so  that  if  it  were 
not  for  the  nice  chivalrous  spirit  of  the  man,  his 
De  ence  would  be  nearly  as  deservedly  forgotten 
as  Congreve's  answer  back  at  Collier,  and  as 
Shelley's  later  and  rather  overweening  Defence 
29 


Criticism 

would  be,  If  it  had  its  strict  merits.  This  attitude 
o£  the  defensive  is  rarely  a  critical  attitude  of 
much  service  ;  because  the  arguments  that  are 
met  are  always  irrelevant.  Sidney,  one  means,  did 
nothing  to  forecast  Shakespeare  ;  no  more  than 
Mr.  Bernard  Shaw  in  A  Dramatic  Realist  to  his 
Critics  did  to  forecast  Hauptmann.  If  Shake- 
speare had  written  prefaces,  we  should  have  had 
some  criticism  ;  but  he  was  a  wise  man  who 
knew  that  it  wasn't  his  business.  Jonson  scraped 
together  some  good  ideas ;  and  then,  I  suppose, 
we  come  to  Dryden,  who  knew  all  the  rules  of 
the  game,  and  whose  importance  is  that  he  was 
the  first  man  to  co-ordinate  them.  One  imagines 
that,  if  you  had  done  anything  at  all  in  letters 
under  Dryden,  you  could  not  but  have  been  aware 
of  him  ;  any  more  than,  if  you  had  lived  a 
century  later,  you  could  have  ignored  Dr. 
Johnson.  They  remained  rules,  of  course — 
"  th'exactest  rules  " — but  you  never  know  when 
Dryden  will  transcend  them  ;  if  not  in  his  plays, 
or  poems,  then  in  his  criticism,  as  in  the  admir- 
able passages  distinguishing  between  Shakespeare 
and  Ben  Jonson.  Dryden  is  the  first  of  the 
30 


Criticism 

craftsmen-critics.  Pope  on  critics  is  very  amus- 
ing and  contemporaneous,  contemporaneous 
with  ourselves,  that  is  to  say.  But  one  would 
hardly  call  the  Essay  on  Criticism  constructive. 
As  for  the  commentators  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury, Johnson  had  his  fling  at  them  when  he 
said  that  Warburton  would  make  two-and-fifty 
Theobalds  cut  into  slices,  but  the  worst  of  War- 
burton  was  that  he  had  a  rage  for  saying  some- 
thing when  there  was  nothing  to  be  said.  It 
was  Johnson  who  said,  when  a  certain  mild 
gentleman  had  asserted  the  contrary  opinion  : 
"  Why  no.  Sir ;  this  is  not  just  reasoning.  You 
may  abuse  a  tragedy,  though  you  cannot  write 
one.  You  may  scold  a  carpenter  who  has  made 
you  a  bad  table,  though  you  cannot  make  a  table. 
It  is  not  your  trade  to  make  tables."  That  is 
the  critic's  Declaration  of  Rights  ;  and  here  is 
his  declaration  of  duties.  The  occasion  was 
Mrs.  Montague,  a  lady  distinguished  for  having 
written  an  Essay  on  Shakespeare.  "  Reynolds  : 
I  think  that  essay  does  her  honour.  Johnson  : 
Yes,  Sir,  it  does  her  honour,  but  it  would  do 
nobody  else  honour.    I  have  indeed,  not  read  it 

31 


Criticism 

all.  But  when  I  take  up  the  end  of  a  web,  and 
find  it  packthread,  I  do  not  expect,  by  looking 
further,  to  find  embroidery.  Sir,  I  will  venture 
to  say,  there  is  not  one  sentence  of  true  criticism 
in  her  book.  Garrick  :  But,  Sir,  surely  it  shews 
how  much  Voltaire  has  mistaken  Shakespeare, 
which  nobody  else  has  done,  Johnson  :  Sir, 
nobody  else  has  thought  it  worth  while.  And 
what  merit  is  there  in  that  ?  You  may  as  well 
praise  a  schoolmaster  for  whipping  a  boy  who 
has  construed  ill.  No,  Sir,  there  is  no  real 
criticism  in  it :  none  shewing  the  beauty  of 
thought,  as  formed  on  the  workings  of  the 
human  heart."  That  is  a  picture  of  the  critic 
among  the  commenters — wise,  admirable,  witty 
fellows,  but  commenters. 

I  think  that  the  influence  of  Johnson  on  those 
critics  who  came  after  him,  on  Coleridge,  on 
Lamb,  on  Hazlitt,  on  Leigh  Hunt,  must  have 
been  quite  incalculable.  If  Johnson  was  not  a 
constructive  critic  (his  care  that  the  Whig 
dogs  got  the  worst  of  it  was  not  quite  per- 
fectly scientific,  if  it  was  human),  he  is  the 
mighty  and  abiding  instance  of  the  benefit  con- 
32 


Criticism 

ferred  by  the  destructive  critic  in  whose  rocky 
and  laughing  presence  the  false  good  and  the 
foolish  irrelevant  cannot  live.  To  meet  Dr. 
Johnson,  even  to-day,  is  to  receive  a  challenge  to 
produce  your  critical  values.  If  he  was  not 
himself  a  constructive  critic,  he  was  the  cause 
of  constructive  criticism  in  others.  Thus 
Hazlitt,  in  defending  his  own  criticism  of 
Shakespeare  against  the  criticism  of  the  com- 
mentators and  the  Ultra-Crepidareans,^  did  but 
carry  further  the  ridicule  which  Johnson  had 
begun.  One  may  see  Johnson  as  the  great  fore- 
runner of  the  Renascence  of  criticism,  which 
quite  properly  was  one  with  the  general  move- 
ment in  literature  which  Mr.  Watts-Dunton 
has  called  the  Renascence  of  Wonder.  As  the 
poets  awoke  with  surprise  to  nature,  the  critics 
awoke  with  surprise  to  letters.  One  may  find 
Hazlitt  a  better  critic  than  Coleridge,  whose 
inspired  flashes  have  their  complement  in  a  vast 

'  A  term  which  Hazlitt  applied  to  Gittbrd,  but  which  was 
invented  by  Leigh  Hunt.  Mr.  Max  Beerbohm  has  called  the 
Ultra-Crepidareans  of  our  own  day  the  dullards  who  think  that 
criticism  consists  in  spotting  mistakes. 

c  33 


Criticism 

deal  of  smoke.  Coleridge's  criticism,  too,  has  the 
defect  of  all  system  makers ;  there  comes  a  time 
when  he  is  more  interested  in  the  universal 
metaphysical  sufficiency  of  his  system  than  in 
the  real  differences  of  things.  One  may  find 
Hazlitt,  apart  altogether  from  the  other  com- 
parative beauties  of  the  men,  a  better  critic  than 
Lamb  ;  Lamb  happened  to  be  awake  more  fully 
to  the  virtues  of  the  lesser  Elizabethans,  but 
Hazlitt  would  not  have  made  the  mistake  Lamb 
made  with  regard  to  the  comic  writers  of  the 
Restoration.  Hazlitt,  indeed,  did  not  make  it ; 
he  supplied  without  effort  the  perfect  and  effi- 
cient key  to  their  appreciation,  which  fits  the 
lock  of  their  treasury  to  this  day.  Lamb,  one 
feels,  natural  critic  though  he  was,  exercised  his 
gift  with  a  rather  more  sedulous  regard  to  the 
demands  of  his  ow{^  day.  As  for  Leigh  Hunt, 
he  was  just  a  good  fellow  ;  sensitive  enough,  but 
not  so  profoundly  sensible  of  the  critic's  task 
as  to  feel  no  pain  when  Hazlitt  in  his  judgments 
over-rode  the  prime  irrelevance  of  friendship. 
Mr.  Augustine  Birrell,  in  his  timid  and  cautionary 
little  book;  takes  Hazlitt  to  task  for  speaking  the 
34 


Criticism 

truth  about  Coleridge  and  Wordsworth  ;  but 
surely  it  is  possible  to  see  to-day  that  it  was  the 
truth  ?  What  Hazlitt  did  was  for  twenty-five 
years  to  speak  the  truth  about  the  things  of  art 
as  he  saw  them.  He  wore  himself  out  by  giving 
to  the  magazines  and  journals  criticism,  when 
comment  would  have  pleased  them  just  as  well. 
"  If  theatrical  criticisms  were  only  written  when 
there  is  something  worth  writing  about,"  he 
said,  "  it  would  be  hard  upon  us  who  Hve  by 
them."  Writing  about  things  that  were  worth 
while  and  were  not  worth  while,  he  never  failed 
in  genuine  criticism  ;  he  never  failed,  I  think, 
in  an  "  intelligent  sympathy."  And  when  he 
died  he  said,  "  Well,  I've  had  a  happy  life." 
"  You  say  I  want  imagination^''  he  once  wrote 
to  Leigh  Hunt.  "  If  you  mean  invention  or 
fancy,  I  say  so  too  ;  but  if  you  mean  a  disposi- 
tion to  sympathise  with  the  claims  or  merits 
of  others,  I  deny  it."  He  recognised  Keats  for 
what  he  was,  and  did  not  wait,  with  the  modern 
deference  to  posterity,  the  statutory  number  of 
years  after  his  death  to  do  it.  Scott  he  corrected, 
not  in  anger  (in  spite  of  the  most  insurmountable 

35 


Criticism 

political  differences),  but  with  judgment,  as  in 
the  Book  of  Common  Prayer  we  ask  that  we  may 
be  corrected  ;  that  is  to  say,  he  praised  him  for 
what  is  praiseworthy,  he  praised  because  he 
loved  :  Hazlitt  is  not  only  the  best  contemporary 
critic  of  the  Waverley  Novels,  he  is  the  best 
critic  they  have  had  to  this  day.  He  who 
exercises  a  constant  independence  of  spirit  (was 
his  principle),  and  yet  seldom  gives  offence  by 
the  freedom  of  his  opinions,  may  be  presumed 
to  have  a  well-regulated  mind.  In  an  age  that 
was  a  reaction  against  the  eighteenth  century  he 
was  not  afraid  to  say  what  he  liked  in  the  eigh- 
teenth century — because  he  did  like  it ;  he  was 
not  afraid  to  call  Pope  a  poet.  In  an  age  that 
wSs  all  for  giving  its  adherence  to  Germany,  he 
did  not  feel  disposed  to  give  up  his  adherence  to 
what  he  knew  and  loved  of  France.  And  yet 
one  never  feels  him  to  have  been  an  intransigeant. 
First  and  foremost  his  art  was  not  the  gentle  art 
of  making  enemies.  He  was  merely  exception- 
ally free  from  all  the  cants  which  cloud  the  judg- 
ment ;  from  the  cant  of  the  Time  Spirit,  for 
example.  His  own  instinctive  and  disciplined 
36 


Criticism 

judgment  was  enough  for  him,  that  is  all.  Of 
course  he  was  not  free  from  what  are  called 
prejudices,  for  "  we  are  only  justified  in  rejecting 
prejudices,"  he  said,  "  when  we  can  explain  the 
grounds  of  them  ;  or  when  they  are  at  war  with 
nature,  which  is  the  strongest  prejudice  of  all." 
In  effect,  I  am  William  Hazlitt,  he  said,  and  this 
is  the  work  in  question  as  my  personahty,  stripped 
as  clear  as  I  can  make  it  of  irrelevancies,  reflects 
it.  It  is  likely  that  that  is  as  near  as  we  can 
come  to  the  definition  of  the  critic  as  the  reflect- 
ing and  recording  instrument. 


37 


IV 

For  hammer  as  we  may  at  the  idea  of  im- 
partiality, the  critic  remains  the  critic  still,  with 
the  whole  of  his  contributory  value  in  his  own 
person,  as  the  whole  of  the  value  of  the  artist  is 
in  his.  We  shall  ask  that  the  critic  have  first 
the  critic's  nature,  and  then  that  he  have  the 
necessary  checks  upon  it,  which  have  been  ac- 
quired in  experience  of  the  art  of  appraisal.  But 
the  critic  is  not  by  character  a  learned  person  ; 
he  is  at  most  the  populariser  of  learning.  Take 
the  writer  of  criticism  who  embodies  most 
clearly  in  the  general  conception  the  idea  of  an 
erudite  impartiality,  the  calm,  cool  vigours  of 
his  craft ;  and  what,  in  Pater's  Marius,  is  the 
critic's  axiomatic  principle  ? — "  To  know  when 
one's  self  is  interested,  is  the  first  condition  of 
interesting  other  people."  The  natural  critic 
knows  when  he  is  interested  with  the  ease  and 
certainty  with  which  the  weather-glass  knows  it 
has  experienced  pressure ;  and  the  corollary  is 
that  he  knows  with  an  equal  ease  and  certainty 
38 


Criticism 

when  he  is  not  interested.  It  is  in  vain  to  ask 
him  to  force  his  interest ;  it  is  worse,  it  is  destruc- 
tive of  his  value,  as  though  one  were  to  quarrel 
with  the  household  instrument  that  did  not 
register  fair  weather.  If  the  thermometer  states 
the  temperature  of  our  room  to  be  below  what 
is  pleasing,  and  we  have  reason  to  beheve  that 
the  fire  is  gone  out,  we  go  into  another  room ; 
we  do  not  hold  a  candle  to  the  thermometer 
If  the  clock  asserts  the  hour  to  be  one  unpleasing 
to  our  fancy,  we  do  not  strike  the  clock  across 
the  face  :  the  poor  thing  is  doing  its  duty.  But 
if  we  have  reason  to  suspect  our  clock  of  an  iU- 
regulated  mind,  we  may  leave  its  assertions  un- 
regarded and  take  our  time  from  another.  And 
we  may  do  just  the  same  with  our  critics.  If 
the  critic  has  liberty  to  record  what  has  interested 
him,  ours  is  an  equal  Hberty  to  deny  that  we  are 
interested.  As  Rousseau  said,  Ma  jonction  est 
de  dire  la  verite,  mats  non  fas  de  la  faire  croire. 
And  out  of  the  multitude  of  voices  will  come 
truth.  Truth  is,  after  all,  the  thing  that  pleases 
a  man,  and  he  cannot  ask  that  he  have  not  to 
go  out  and  seek  his  pleasure.    The  best  of  the 

39 


Criticism 

critics,  or  all  the  critics  together,  can  but  point 
the  way.  And  he  is  generally  not  the  best  of 
critics  who  claims  that  the  truth  as  he  sees  it 
is  the  only  truth,  or  even  the  whole  of  one  of 
its  aspects. 

The  natural  critic,  I  take  it,  believes  himself  to 
be  speaking  the  truth,  or  he  would  have  no 
pleasure  in  speaking.  His  place  is  midway  be- 
tween that  of  the  pontiffs,  who  deal  in  the  slap- 
up  article,  and  those  critics,  like  Wilde,  whose 
denial  that  one  statement  is  any  more  true  than 
its  opposite  is  a  form  of  perversion.  To  the 
young,  Wilde  is  a  very  persuasive  critic,  because 
from  his  elegant  dialogues  in  the  Socratic  form 
there  emerges  with  a  beautiful  distinctness  the 
truth  that  there  is  no  truth,  a  truth  which  to 
the  young  is  very  palatable.  It  is  akin  to  Mr. 
Bernard  Shaw's  golden  rule  that  there  are  no 
golden  rules.  To  the  young,  who  have  not  yet 
seen  performed  the  simple  experiment  of  turn- 
ing things  inside  out,  it  is  an  extremely  pleasing 
experience  to  learn  that  life  imitates  art  far 
more  than  art  imitates  life,  or  that  it  is  very 
much  more  difficult  to  talk  about  a  thing  than 
40 


Criticism 

to  do  it.  To  find  Wilde  completing  a  critical 
essay  with  the  remark  that  while  he  beheves 
every  word  of  what  he  has  written  he  would 
equally  have  beHeved  every  word  if  he  had 
written  the  opposite,  is  hke  receiving  a  lesson  in 
gentlemanly  deportment.  What  a  refreshing 
modesty  !  How  charming  an  abnegation  of  the 
functions  of  tyrant !  But  Wilde  does  not,  as 
the  saying  is,  carry  one  very  far.  There  is  the 
highest  utiUty  in  the  provocative  statement  of 
the  truth  that  art's  business  is  not  to  imitate  life, 
because  there  are  millions  of  people  (Ruskin 
was  one  of  them)  who  have  not  yet  got  beyond 
the  point  at  which  they  believe  the  business  of 
art  to  be  imitation.  Similarly,  in  an  age  when 
criticism  is  hardly  suflfered  to  Uve,  there  is  a 
usefulness  in  exalting  the  interpreter  into  a 
higher  rank  than  that  of  the  doer.  In  the  asser- 
tion that  there  is  no  absolute  truth  there  is  the 
most  absolute  truth,  if  one  may  say  so  ;  but  in 
failing  to  understand  that  there  is  such  a  thing 
as  personal  truth  Wilde  was  merely  unfortunate. 
He  had  no  other  idea  but  that  an  attitude  was 
a  thing  one  assumed  ;  he  had  no  idea  of  an  atti- 
41 


Criticism 

tude  as  a  thing  one  found  one's  self  in.  And  that 
is  the  reason  why  his  critical  attitude  did  not 
prove  very  satisfying,  and  has  not  proved  very 
stable. 

Mr.  Ford  Madox  Hueffer  has  asked  in  our 
own  day  for  a  critical  attitude ;  and  in  a 
day  when  it  is  far  too  often  that  of  prostra- 
tion, he  is  quite  right.  We  do  want  to  know 
where  a  man  stands.  Mr.  Hueffer's  entreaty,  if 
one  understood  it  aright,  was  that  a  man  should 
name  his  gods  ;  that  he  should  put  his  cards  on 
the  table  ;  that  he  should  be  on  the  register  of 
the  Medical  Council  or  known  at  Tattersall's, 
as  it  were.  He  may  have  suggested  a  form  of 
competitive  entry,  and  that  a  man  should  earn 
by  the  composition  of  a  thesis  the  right  to  crawl 
over  Shakespeare  or  to  attach  himself  to  the 
hand  of  Miss  Bronte.  I  do  not  know.  Mr. 
Hueffer's  own  gods,  one  understands,  are  Flau- 
bert, Maupassant,  and  Turgeniev,  and  when  he 
deHvers  a  judgment  one  knows  that  these  great 
men  have  been  in  the  opposite  basket.  Now 
this  is  admirable ;  we  know  where  we  stand. 
And  yet  I  seem  to  perceive  a  danger.  Wilde 
42 


Criticism 

was  right  when  he  said  that  it  is  dangerous  to 
name  one's  gods.  One  would  not  wish  to  exclude 
the  critic  who,  when  challenged,  was  not  con- 
scious that  he  had  referred  the  object  under 
consideration  to  any  judgment  but  his  own. 
There  is  the  danger  that  if  you  have  made  up 
your  mind  where  excellence  lives,  that  you 
will  not  go  down  another  street  which  looks 
different.  But  the  critic  has  got  to  go  down. 
He  has  got  to  go  down  to  the  rushes,  or  he  can 
never  get  the  ball.  Mr.  Hueffer  is  a  leading 
member  of  a  modern  school  of  craftsmen- 
critics,  in  which  Mr.  Henry  James  is  headmaster, 
a  school  which  marks  a  great  advance  upon 
Swinburne,  whose  critical  attitude  (one  says 
nothing  of  the  artist)  was  that  of  the  hen  in 
the  farmyard  ;  we  know  she  has  found  some- 
thing by  the  noise  she  makes,  but  it  is  just  as 
likely  to  be  a  pebble  as  a  gem. 

Pater's  "  extraordinary  patience,  and  piercing 
powers  of  vision  to  see  things  '  as  they  are  '  by 
first  ascertaining  how  they  are  to  him,"  have 
been  noted  by  another  admirable  critic  of  the 
same  hierarchy,  the  late  Lionel  Johnson,  who 

43 


Criticism 

died  too  young.  Pater  made  "  appreciations  " 
and  he  made  "  portraits,"  and  while  the  best 
criticism  is  always  happiest  in  giving  adequate 
recognition  and  in  securing  a  rise  in  value,  there 
is  in  general  no  better  word  for  its  product  than 
the  "  portrait " ;  for  is  not  the  task  of  criti- 
cism very  like  the  task  of  painting  a  portrait — the 
making  of  the  picture  of  another  that  is  yet  a 
picture  of  one's  self  ?  Ruskin  did  good  work,  in 
poking  his  rather  cumbersome  fun,  for  example, 
at  Twickenham  Classicism,  "  the  class  of  poetry 
in  which  a  farmer's  girl  is  spoken  of  as  a  '  nymph,' 
and  a  farmer's  boy  as  a  '  swain,'  and  in  which 
throughout  a  ridiculous  and  unnatural  refine- 
ment is  supposed  to  exist  in  rural  life,  merely 
because  the  poet  himself  has  neither  had  the 
courage  to  endure  its  hardships  nor  the  wit  to 
conceive  its  realities  "  ;  but  Ruskin  made  the 
mistake  of  naming  his  gods  too  early,  and  all  his 
life  it  is  likely  that  he  did  what  Mr.  Robert 
Blatchford  has  said  of  Gladstone,  he  talked 
too  much  to  be  a  useful  thinker.  John  Adding- 
ton  Symonds  had  the  wit  and  the  patience  to 
preserve  a  clear  head  on  naturalism  and  idealism 
44 


Criticism 

in  painting  when  much  nonsense  was  being 
talked  on  these  things  ;  nothing  could  be  better, 
for  example,  than  his  comparison  between 
Caravaggio  and  Zola.  Bagehot's  was  the  criti- 
cism of  the  plain  man,  and  it  may  always  be  read 
with  pleasure ;  it  has  but  little  power  of  illumina- 
tion, but  he  knows  what  he  thinks  as  clearly  of 
the  EngHsh  constitution  as  of  Shakespeare,  and 
we  know  what  he  thinks  too.  And  that  perhaps, 
with  an  added  word  to  note  the  extra  spice  of 
personality,  is  what  one  would  say  of  the  late 
Mr.  Andrew  Lang. 

Criticism  has  been  defined  by  Mr.  Arthur 
Symons  as  a  valuation  of  forces,  which  is  in- 
different to  their  direction.  It  is  a  conception 
of  the  critical  task  which  he  has  himself  notably 
and  beautifully  exemplified ;  Mr.  Symons  is 
one  of  the  most  delicate  of  recording  instru- 
ments. He  has  set  himself  against  work  as  diverse 
as  that  of  the  French  Symbolists,  of  the  Eliza- 
bethan dramatists,  and  of  the  Victorian  music- 
halls,  and  has  registered  impressions  with  un- 
wilful  exactitude.  But  are  we  to  accept  this 
indifference  to  direction  as  a  defining  condition 
45 


Criticism 

in  our  conception  of  the  critic  ?  What  becomes 
o£  Hazlitt's  "  Nature,  which  is  the  strongest 
prejudice  of  all "  ?  I  do  not  think  we  need 
accept  it  so.  Not,  that  is  to  say,  in  regard  to 
the  individual  critic.  Abstract  criticism,  oh 
yes,  that  will  be  indifferent  to  direction  ;  be- 
cause all  directions  will  have  their  representative. 
But  we  need  not  ask  the  individual  critic  to  go 
against  his  nature  ;  to  isolate  it  in  cold  storage  ; 
to  chain  it  while  he  does  some  delicate  business, 
as  one  has  to  chain  an  over-cheerful  dog.  He 
may  keep  it  to  accompany  him,  if  he  has  but 
properly  disciplined  it  to  the  work.  The  ab- 
stract ideal  of  criticism  is  that  emanation  of 
truth  which  would  issue  from  the  arena  of  the 
arts  and  denote  the  vigour  of  their  being  as  the 
dust-cloud  denotes  the  field  of  battle.  And  in 
this  spirit  it  is  that  we  may  welcome  the  Futurists 
and  the  Post-Futurists,  not  because  we  are  in- 
different to  their  direction — it  is  even  possible 
that  we  may  think  their  Future  a  most  un- 
pleasant direction — but  because  of  the  disturb- 
ance they  give  to  the  false,  comfortably  seated 
opinion  that  art  is  imitation. 
46 


Criticism 

Our  ideal  critic,  perhaps,  will  practise  always 
a  certain  aloofness ;  true  to  the  caution  which 
characterises  him  in  going  into  battle,  for  it  is 
not  his  function.  His  is  the  second's  place  in 
the  arena,  the  place  of  the  privileged  watcher- 
on  at  the  arts  and  life.  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw  was  a 
successful  critic ;  successful  not  only  in  getting 
himself  listened  to  but  in  achieving  his  practical 
aim — which  was  to  open  the  theatre  to  his  plays. 
But  Mr.  Shaw's  criticism,  qua  criticism,  was  over- 
simpHfied  ;  it  consisted  in  sitting  in  the  theatre 
and,  when  people  behind  him  wept,  in  telling 
them  they  had  better  have  laughed,  and  when 
they  laughed,  in  proving  to  them  it  had  been 
better  had  they  wept.  Mr.  Shaw's  criticism  is 
criticism  d  clej ;  when  he  was  guardian  of  the 
dramatic  Pantheon  he  let  M.  Brieux  in  on 
Moliere's  heels,  for  no  better  reason  than  that 
M.  Brieux's  key  was  in  some  respects  the  dupli- 
cate of  Mr.  Shaw's.  There  is  another,  naturally 
far  more  belligerent,  person,  Mr.  Gilbert 
Chesterton,  who  is  yet  a  better  critic  than  Mr. 
Bernard  Shaw.  His  likeness  to  Hazlitt  does  not 
stop  short  at  a  certain  inability  quite  to  catch 
47 


Criticism 

quotations ;  his  sensibility  to,  and  retentiveness 
of,  what  really  matters,  is  at  least  equally  to  be 
noted.  Mr.  Chesterton  is  a  natural  critic,  and 
one  is  glad  to  know  that  he  is  there.  Mr. 
Walkley  is  the  great  exponent  in  the  theatres  of 
Hazlitt's  maxim  that  good  criticism  does  not 
result  only  when  there  is  something  worth 
writing  about.  But  perhaps,  of  all  the  writers 
of  our  day,  we  are  surest  of  Mr.  Max  Beerbohm. 
Hanging  there  elegant  upon  the  outskirts  of  the 
time,  conscious  with  Hamlet  that  the  hand  of 
little  employment  hath  the  daintier  sense,  one 
of  us  and  yet  the  intimate  and  equal  of  those  of 
whom  he  writes,  he  is,  we  know,  a  critic.  He 
has,  too,  his  cards  on  the  table  ;  but  they  are 
wont  to  be  not  visiting  cards,  inscribed  with  the 
names  of  the  great,  but  cards  in  that  lottery 
in  which  we  all  are  participants — habits,  and 
fancies,  and  ingredients  of  mood  and  mind.  We 
know  him,  we  like,  in  the  words  of  the  song,  his 
style  and  size :  we  delegate  him  to  do  our 
duty  for  us.  And  that  is  our  final  compli- 
ment to  the  critic,  for,  as  Mr.  Puff  says  in  the 
comedy,  the  number  of  those  who  undergo  the 
48 


Criticism 

fatigue  of  judging  for  themselves  is  very  small 
indeed. 

But  there  is  one  more  species  of  over-simpli- 
fication before  we  have  done  with  our  summary 
(which  is  itself  an  example  of  over-simpli- 
fication). Nordau  made  himself  ridiculous  by 
indicting  an  age.  The  Nietzscheans  come 
springing  fully  armed  from  •  the  head  of  their 
parent,  ready  to  dispose  of  all  the  art  that  is 
subsequent  to  the  Pyramid  with  a  few  sharp, 
short  words  of  command.  We  do  not  love  these 
people,  we  do  not  recognise  the  truth  of  many 
of  the  words  they  say,  nor  is  the  surprise  they 
give  us  a  pleasant  surprise.  They  have  fallen 
captive  to  the  lure  of  the  over-simplified.  I  do 
not  think  that  we  love  the  Frenchman  Bergson, 
whose  theory  of  the  comic  suits  Moliere  very 
fairly  but  which  does  not  suit  Fielding  and  which 
makes  Shakespeare  look,  in  his  less  superb  mo- 
ments, what  Voltaire  called  him.  Perhaps  these 
people  are  the  victims  of  their  values.  Perhaps 
they  are  better  at  getting  their  hat  on  the  head 
of  the  patient  than  at  fitting  the  head  of  the 
patient  with  a  hat.  They  deal  in  but  one  article, 
D  49 


Criticism 

and  they  believe  in  its  special  ability  to  cover 
all  heads.  They  have  no  out  sizes  in  their 
emporium,  and,  above  all,  no  half-sizes.  They 
are  not  among  the  best  of  critics,  because  they 
have  no  idea  of,  no  natural  love  for,  "  pointing 
out  the  real  differences  of  things." 


SO 


Any  sort  of  soul  can  have  adventures  among 
masterpieces — the  lady,  for  example,  who  threw 
a  butcher's  knife  at  the  Venus  of  Velasquez ;  the 
point  at  which  the  adventures  begin  to  interest 
us  is  the  point  at  which  criticism  begins.  The  ad- 
ventures must  be  real,  and  they  must  be  relevant ; 
as  the  critical  adventures  of  M.  Anatole  France 
have  been.  When  the  late  Francis  Thompson, 
in  his  celebrated  Essay  on  Shelley,  spoke  of  his 
subject's  "fondness  for  apparently  futile  amuse- 
ments, such  as  the  saiHng  of  paper  boats,"  he 
went  on  to  add,  "  Very  possibly  in  the  paper 
boat  he  saw  the  magic  bark  of  Laon  or  Cythna." 
Now  very  possibly  Shelley  saw  in  the  paper  boat 
a  paper  boat,  the  sailing  of  which  on  little  tur- 
bulent streams  is  a  good  enough  employment  even 
for  a  poet,  who  cannot  be  engaged  for  ever  with 
his  poetry.  The  comment  of  Thompson  is  an 
unreal  comment,  a  something  pretty-pretty,  a 
piece  of  embroidery  on  an  idea  not  otherwise 
distinguished.    We  do  not  want  our  criticism  to 

5J 


Criticism 

foster  the  belief  that  poets  live  on  lotus,  or 
walk  the  beaten  pavement  with  vine-leaves  in 
their  hair  ;  any  fool  of  a  twopenny  scribbler  can 
lend  himself  to  that  work.  The  reason  why 
Boswell  is  a  magnificent  piece  of  criticism  as 
well  as  a  magnificent  piece  of  biography  is  be- 
cause it  gives  us  a  man  and  not  a  giant ;  the 
author  may  have  been  a  fop,  but  he  was  not 
the  kind  of  fop  who  would  have  us  believe  he 
was  always  in  his  dress  clothes,  nor  his  master 
either.  The  business  of  criticism  is  to  assist 
reaUty,  and  it  does  an  ill  deed  when  it  goes  into 
the  contrary  service  and  lends  itself  to  the 
obscuration  of  values.  There  is  an  amiable  type 
of  writer  who,  mistaking  the  duty  and  privilege 
of  criticism  to  be  based  upon  the  personal,  will 
lead  up  to  a  play  by  an  account  of  what  he  ate 
for  dinner  and  will  make  less  of  the  author's 
third  act  than  of  the  circumstance  that  at  this 
point  a  lady  seated  behind  him,  readjusting  the 
position  of  her  dismounted  head-gear,  drove  a 
pin  into  his  back.  Now  this  is  an  abuse  of  the 
personal,  which  can  be  rendered  tolerable  only 
by  some  singular  charm  in  the  narrator,  and 

52 


Criticism 

which  can  never  be,  one  thinks,  a  grant  in  aid 
to  the  purest  critical  understanding.  The  critic 
must  steel  himself  against  these  pricks,  and  do 
his  service  by  the  presented  object  in  simpleness 
and  duty.  It  is  by  means  such  as  these  that  the 
demand  has  come  that  criticism  should  be  im- 
personal. But  criticism,  whether  it  be  signed 
vi^ith  the  name  and  address  of  the  writer  as  Mr. 
Bernard  Shaw  would  have  it,  or  whether  it  bear 
merely  the  imprimatur  of  the  standing  of  its 
journal,  is  signed  all  over  if  it  be  worth  the  paper 
it  is  written  on.  The  personality  of  the  art  does 
not  lie  ih  the  ego,  or  a  painter's  work  would  be 
unrecognisable  when  it  was  not  a  self-portrait, 
and  a  novel  by  Mr.  Hardy  cease  to  be  a  novel 
by  Mr.  Hardy  when  it  abandoned  the  oratio 
recta.  The  question  of  whether  the  critic  say 
"I"  or  "we"  or  "one"  or  "the  present 
writer  "  is  of  the  smallest  importance,  so  long 
as  it  is  the  personal  truth  he  speaks ;  and  the 
personal  truth,  not  about  his  antecedents  or 
his  liver  (this  is  where  the  essayist  may  have  the 
advantage  of  him),  but  about  the  necessary 
business  that  is  then  to  be  considered.     There 

53 


Criticism 

are  publishers  who  will  dress  a  book  so  vilely 
that  the  reader  of  taste  cannot  bring  himself 
to  read  it,  there  are  theatre  managers  who  will 
stifle  us  in  our  seats  or  incommode  our  vision 
with  a  pillar,  there  are  picture-galleries  where 
one  can  hardly  preserve  a  foothold  for  the  hard, 
uncomfortable  brilliance  of  the  floor ;  but  the 
critic,  of  all  men,  will  not  suffer  himself  to  be 
put  by  these  things  off  the  novel,  the  play,  or  the 
picture,  or  he  will  be  guilty,  not  of  criticism,  but 
of  an  irrelevancy  of  comment  which  is  the  same 
in  kind  as  those  of  which  we  have  already  spoken. 
The  immediate  need,  then,  of  the  present  day 
is  for  criticism,  and  criticism,  and  for  yet  more 
criticism.  I  do  not  see  how  there  can  well  be 
too  much.  But  it  must  be  criticism.  It  is 
illustrative  of  the  desuetude  into  which  criticism 
has  fallen  that  although  a  journal  called  the 
Critic  flourished  almost  without  intermission 
from  Smollett's  day  until  our  own,  the  journal 
which  at  present  bears  that  title  is  a  journal 
whose  interests  are  limited  to  the  movements  of 
the  markets.  It  is  as  though  those  were  the  only 
things  whose  colours,  whose  light  and  shade, 
54 


Criticism 

whose  soul  and  body,  our  age  cared  exactly  to 
reflect.  There  are  excellent  critics  of  the 
game  of  golf  ;  there  are  critics  of  football,  of 
the  Rugby  code  especially,  who  do  their  work  so 
admirably,  that  one  harbours  secret  wishes  that 
they  might  be  guilty  of  malversation,  and  so, 
like  Hazlitt,  write  not  only  of  Neate  versus  the 
Gas-man.  I  do  not  say  that  we  have  no  literary 
criticism :  there  would  be  the  literary  supplement 
of  The  Times,  for  example,  with  an  increased  pub- 
lic and  an  unreduced  integrity,  standing  there  to 
refute  me.  But  I  do  think  that  two  things  are 
incontestable  :  one,  that  in  the  general  rush 
and  outpour  from  the  press,  literary  evaluations 
are  mixed  or  altogether  wanting ;  and  the  other, 
that  for  the  natural  critic  to  Uve  by  the  genuine 
practice  of  his  craft  is  more  difficult  than  it 
should  be.  The  words  of  the  Scriptures  have 
been  altered,  and  we  now  learn  that  man  cannot 
live  by  criticism  alone.  One  does  not  wish, 
one  would  not  expect,  that  in  the  industry  of 
letters  his  should  be  the  primary  "  pull  "  ;  as 
we  have  seen,  the  critic's  is  but  a  secondary  func- 
tion.    By  the  nature  of  things,  he  it  is  who  is 

55 


Criticism 

the  residual  claimant ;  but  if  the  recognition 
were  but  more  clear  that  he,  if  not  the  creator 
of  wealth,  was  at  least  the  conserver  of  values, 
it  is  difficult  to  believe  that  this  could  be  other 
than  good  for  the  system  of  letters. 

One  would  like,  then,  to  see  the  critic's  function 
more  generously  recognised  by  the  consuming 
public  in  England.  It  is  a  significant  thing  that 
while  the  least  line  of  Sheridan's  play  of  The 
Critic  is  familiar  in  our  mouth  as  household 
words,  very  little  is  known  or  cared  about  the 
Duke  of  Buckingham's  play  of  the  Rehearsal. 
Both  are  delightful  plays,  but  the  difference  is 
that  while  the  earlier  playmakesfun  of  a  dramatist, 
the  play  which  owes  a  great  deal  to  it  makes  fun 
of  the  critics.  And  very  properly,  too,  for  there, 
in  Mr.  Puff,  and  Mr.  Sneer,  and  Mr.  Dangle,  you 
have  the  lot  of  them,  the  pretending  usurpers. 
But  the  point  is  this,  that  the  success  of  Sheri- 
dan's satire  is  broad-based  upon  the  popular  mis- 
conception of  the  critic  as  a  censorious  person  : 

Those  men  of  spleen,  who  fond  the  world  should 

know  it, 
Sit  down,  and  for  their  twopence  damn  a  poet — 

56 


Criticism 

as  one  of  his  Restoration  predecessors  had  it. 
A  great  deal  of  sentimental  nonsense  has  been 
talked  about  the  English  treatment  of  the  artist ; 
the  English  love  an  artist,  if  he  do  but  take  pains 
enough  to  bring  himself  to  their  notice,  by  death 
or  other  means.  But  the  English  have  never  yet 
been  brought  to  see  the  point  of  the  critic  ;  and 
for  what  they  do  not  see  the  point  of,  the  English 
will  not  pay.  Small  blame  to  them,  either  ;  the 
critic  is  a  small  enough  point  in  all  conscience, 
though  he  have  served  for  a  peg  to  hang  this 
little  book  upon. 

One  would  like,  also,  to  see  the  function  of  criti- 
cism more  clearly  and  generally  separated  from 
that  of  creative  production.  If  I  were  a  creative 
artist  I  would  no  more  wish  to  do  my  own 
criticism  than  to  do  my  own  washing,  or  to 
protect  my  own  shores.  And  yet,  all  around  us, 
the  work  of  impartial  estimation  is  being  en- 
trusted to  those  who  are  themselves,  or  to  those 
who  would  be,  prime  workers  in  the  arts.  Partly 
it  is  the  belief  deep  inlaid  in  humanity  that  it 
is  safer  to  tend  one's  own  territory ;  it  is  very 
annoying  to  grow  nice  daffodils  in  your  country 
57 


Criticism 

garden,  and  to  have  the  rabbits  eat  them.  It 
was  in  this  spirit  that  Charles  Reade  wrote  the 
review  of  The  Cloister  and,  the  Hearth  over 
another  signature,  rather  than  let  the  delicate 
business  out  of  his  own  hands.  Partly  (but  one 
would  not  make  too  much  of  this)  it  is  the 
motive  of  the  Quid  Pro  Quo.  Partly  it  is  for 
lack  of  a  clear  discrimination  in  those  in  authority; 
they  have  not  seen,  or  they  have  lost  touch  with, 
the  desirabiHty  of  a  journal  which  is  the  distinct 
organ  of  a  craft,  that  of  the  critical.  Partly, 
of  course,  it  is  the  public,  which  puts  up  with 
what  it  gets,  and  gets  what  it  puts  up  with.  One 
is  not  saying,  in  saying  this,  anything  at  all  in 
dispraise  of  the  criticism  which  Keats  put  into 
his  letters,  which  the  authors  of  Lyrical  Ballads 
put  into  their  prefaces,  or  the  late  J.  M.  Synge 
into  his.  Of  course  when  the  creative  artist 
speaks  of  his  art,  there  is  the  highest  possible 
gain  in  our  listening.  Of  course  the  new  band 
of  craftsmen-critics,  in  so  far  as  they  are  a  band 
and  in  so  far  as  they  are  new  (for  the  two  func- 
tions of  creator  and  critic  have  never  been  wholly 
separable)  are  entirely  to  be  welcomed.     One 

58 


Criticism 

would  still  like  to  see  the  separate  recognition 
of  the  critic,  in  virtue  of  the  separate  nature  of 
his  craft.  There  is  an  admirable  analogy  and 
apology  for  that  craft,  and  one  which  to  the 
artists  should  be  placatory ;  for  do  we  not,  by 
firing  into  the  clouds,  bring  down  their  rain 
more  plenteously  ? 

What  is  a  critic  ?  asked  the  Actor-Manager, 
and  did  not  stay  for  an  answer. 

It  happens  that  William  Hazlitt  answered  the 
Actor-Manager's  question,  and  on  both  the 
counts  on  the  consideration  of  which  we  have 
ended.  Of  criticism's  right,  he  wrote  in  On 
Judging  of  Pictures  : — 

"  I  deny  in  toto  and  at  once  the  exclusive 
right  and  power  of  painters  to  judge  of  pictures. 
What  is  a  picture  made  for  ?  To  convey  certain 
ideas  to  the  mind  of  a  painter — that  is,  of  one  man 
in  ten  thousand  ?  No,  but  to  make  them  apparent 
to  the  eye  and  mind  of  all.  If  a  picture  be  ad- 
mired by  none  but  painters,  I  think  it  is  a  strong 
presumption  that  the  picture  is  bad.  A  painter  is 
no  more  a-^udge,  I  suppose,  than  another  man  of 

59 


Criticism 

how  people  feel  and  look  under  certain  passions 
and  events.  Everybody  sees  as  well  as  he  whether 
certain  figures  on  the  canvas  are  like  such  a  man,  or 
like  a  cow,  a  tree,  a  bridge  or  a  windmill.  .  .  . 

"  To  go  into  the  higher  branches  of  art — the 
poetry  of  painting — I  deny  still  more  peremp- 
torily the  exclusiveness  of  the  initiated.  It 
might  as  well  be  said  that  none  but  those  who 
could  write  a  play  have  any  right  to  sit  on  the 
third  row  in  the  pit,  on  the  first  night  of  a  new 
tragedy ;  nay,  there  is  more  plausibility  in  the 
one  than  the  other.  No  man  can  judge  of  poetry 
without  possessing  in  some  measure  a  poetical 
mind  ;  it  need  not  be  of  that  degree  necessary 
to  create,  but  it  must  be  equal  to  taste  and  to 
analyse.  ,  .  . 

"  I  may  know  what  is  a  just  or  a  beautiful 
representation  of  love,  anger,  madness,  despair, 
without  being  able  to  draw  a  straight  line  ;  and 
I  do  not  see  how  that  faculty  adds  to  the  capa- 
bility of  so  judging." 

And  of  criticism's  duty,  he  wrote  in  that  Letter 
to  William  Gifford  which  will  serve  for  all  time 
as  the  retort  of  the  natural  observer  upon  the 
60 


Criticism 

fortified  Zoilist,  of  the  true  critic  upon  the 
merely  censorious  person.  He  spoke  of  the 
functions  of  criticism  ;  "  but  you,"  he  said, 
"  are  a  nuisance,  and  should  be  abated." 

"  My  account  of  Titian  and  Vandyke's  colour- 
ing, appears  to  you  very  odd,  because  it  is  like 
the  things  described,  and  you  have  no  idea  of 
the  things  described.  If  I  had  described  the 
style  of  these  two  painters  in  terms  applicable 
to  them  both,  and  to  all  other  painters,  you 
would  have  thought  the  precision  of  the  style 
equal  to  the  justness  of  the  sentiment.  ...  It 
is  the  pointing  out  the  real  differences  of  things 
that  offends  you,  for  you  have  no  idea  of  what  is 
meant.  .  .  . 

"  I  have  some  love  of  fame,  of  the  fame  of  a 
Pascal,  or  Leibnitz,  or  a  Berkeley  (none  at  all  of 
popularity),  and  would  rather  that  a  single 
inquirer  after  truth  should  pronounce  my  name, 
after  I  am  dead,  with  the  same  feelings  that  I 
have  thought  of  theirs,  than  be  puffed  in  all  the 
newspapers,  and  praised  in  all  the  reviews,  while 
I  am  Uving.  .  .  ." 

There  speaks  the  critic,  and  we  may  leave  him 
6i 


Criticism 

speaking,  for  we  shall  not  hear  a  better.  And  if 
anybody  expected  this  little  book  to  be  a  history 
of  criticism  from  the  earliest  times  to  the  pre- 
sent, I  hereby  refer  him  to  Professor  George 
Saintsbury's  great  work  on  that  subject. 


63 


BY    P.    P.    HOWE 

THE  REPERTORY  THEATRE 
DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

J.    M.    SYNGE:    A   Critical 
Study 

BERNARD  SHAW  :    A  Critical 
Study 

LONDON  :    MARTIN    SECKER 


PRINTED    BY 

WILLIAM    BRENDON    AND    SON,    LTD. 

PLYMOUTH 

PWNTSC  m    a«EAT   BWTAfN 


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